the fire of service and battle
by Jade Sabre
Summary: "Spectres are not trained, but chosen. Individuals forged in the fire of service and battle; those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file." A place for me to put my Mass Effect ficlets; probably they will mostly center around my Paragon f!Shep.
1. persimmon

**Title:** the fire of service and battle  
**Author:** Jade Sabre  
**Summary: **"Spectres are not trained, but chosen. Individuals forged in the fire of service and battle; those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file."

a place for me to put my Mass Effect ficlets. probably they will mostly center around my Paragon f!Shep

* * *

**Title:** persimmon  
**Notes:** _BACKSTORY emma's dad went mia when emma was 12 and emma was sent to live with her dad's mom while hannah shepard volunteered for the search and rescue; emma spent her adolescence in and out of her grandmother's house and wherever her mom happened to be stationed. (emma's twin sister catie went to stay with hannah's family on elysium.) (they wrote each other.) (and then they both went to the naval academy and catie weaseled their way into being roommates.) (takes place october of their sophomore year.)_

* * *

Emma counts the day she should be having.

She slept through her alarm, Catie's alarm, AM inspection, PT, the showers, formation, breakfast. She woke sometime around 0800—Trigonometry for Pilots, the only math class she could cram into her schedule—and made her bed and went outside and did PT, boxing with the sky. It's a beautiful blue-sky day, and it's nice to have a sky, and sunlight, and air that hasn't been through a recycler for twenty years. She doesn't want to be here.

Showering and breakfast took her through to 0930, when she should have been listening to Major Hawkins attempt to impress upon her cadets the importance of Military History, and by 0945 she's dressed and ready, sitting in the rocking chair on the porch with the little yellow pine box in her lap.

(Catie has a test at 1000 in Colonial Turian. She didn't want to come.)

At 0950, when she should be on the elevator towards Military Tactics, a cloud of dust appears on the horizon, coming up the mountain towards her, and by 0955 she sees the motorcade of hovertrucks, half the residents of the Village riding in their beds. Old Tom leads, his battered truck painfully familiar, his passenger seat painfully empty. Some of the riders in the bed wave—his son, Greg, grabs at his two children as they try to clamber out, no doubt as they're used to—but the little tin-roofed house is empty and echoing, and Emma does not look back as Tom pops open the side door and she climbs into the seat, cradling the box in her gloved hands. At 1015 they're riding down the other side of the mountain, the engine's hum and the crackling of rock a poor substitution for the clatter of booted feet on a space station's metal floor.

Tom rolls the window down; Emma hisses and pulls her hat farther over her ears. He chuckles, says, "Already afraid of the cold?" She would answer, something about the cold of space, maybe, but her words would be lost in the wind whistling by, carrying the scent of rock and brush and cold—and even now she can tell the difference between cold and frost, can smell the snow on the horizon, but by the time it comes she'll be gone again. She doesn't want to go; she doesn't think she'll ever come back.

Most people trying to enter the park go through the gate, but the yearlong residents have their own roads, and this one leads right into the valley, the wildflowers long gone, the grass brown, the campers headed for warmer climes. The Rising Wolf looks undisturbed in the lake's reflection as they park along its shores, and Emma climbs out of the truck, rocks crunching beneath her feet, the fresh sticky scent of pine filling her nose, the fresh pine box in her hands weighing her down. The other trucks and passengers slowly unload, and most only nod in Emma's direction, having already said their condolences at the wake. Tom loiters near her, smiling under his beard at Greg's attempt to heard the kids; Joyce, from her grandmother's quilting circle, comes over, stamping her feet and sniffing. "Lucky she went when she did," she says. "Another two weeks and it'd be death to drive here."

"We still would've come," Tom says, as though trying to reassure Emma. "Besides, she originally wanted Logan Pass. Now _that_ would've been a funeral procession."

Emma shakes her head and steps to the edge of the lake, careful to keep her boots away from the water as it laps at the gravely pebbles. Tom and Joyce keep talking, but she listens as she was taught: to the brush of a breeze in the pine needles, to the susurrus of the water, to the stray whistle of a bird that ought to go south for winter. Situational awareness, her father had called it; her grandmother called it peace.

Pastor Roy finds her and rests his bare hand on her shoulder, his Bible clasped in his other. "Are you ready, Miss Shepard?" he asks.

He's always been unfailingly courteous to her, no matter how many times she tried to sleep through his sermons. She thinks he sees that she can't muster up the will to say _yes_, and nods for her, turning away to wave the others near as she turns away to blink into the sun.

"Dearly beloved," he says, at 1100 when she ought to be scribbling down her homework assignment for Alliance Politics, as she instead stares across the lake, willing the mountains to fall or the sky to part or _something_ to happen to take her away from here. _We're old enough to handle this now_ , Catie says, though if it were Uncle Albert she wouldn't be nearly so calm, _so what if I'm a hypocrite, you're the one that's got to cope, Emma Jane_. She's almost glad Catie didn't come; her twin talks about the green vale of their uncle's farm on Elysium, and she doesn't think she'd appreciate the rocky scruff at this elevation. She wishes she'd visited more, so that she wouldn't have to stand here alone.

_You want to join the Alliance_ , her mother says, as Pastor Roy talks about heaven, _you'd best get use to loss._

She vows that she _won't_, because she won't let anyone be lost.

"Emma," Pastor Roy says, his hand on her shoulder as if he knows she hasn't been listening, "it's time."

She sniffs—the cold is making her nose run, _no sense in crying, child, what's done is done—_and slides back the lid on the little pine box, filled to the brim with ashes. "Dust we are," the pastor says, as she takes a handful, pausing to wait for the breeze to pass, "and to dust we shall return."

She tosses the ashes across the water, but in the still air they linger close and settle on the nearby waves—too close, too likely to wash ashore and be lost under the snow, trampled upon by unwary campers—_I'm dead and gone, child_ , but if that has to be then Emma wants her _gone_, and her biotics flare and she grips the box with one hand as the ashes, buoyed by her implant, rise into the air; she closes her eyes and throws out her free hand and for a moment the gravitational field of Earth itself isn't enough to stop their flight.

"And they will soar on eagles' wings," Pastor Roy says into the uncomfortable silence; Emma opens her eyes and squints to see a small cloud dissipate over the center of lake, turns away, ignores the stares of the others, shoves her way back to Tom's truck as Pastor Roy concludes his sermon, scrubs her nose on the back of her glove. She'll take a ride to the train station and be heading on a shuttle to Luna at 1400—the start of Galactic Anatomy, but it's nothing she can't memorize on her own. And the little tin-roofed house on the lonely mountainside—

She'll take the ride, and she'll be _gone_, and no one will be left who cares.


	2. after elysium

**Title:** [after elysium]

**Notes:** another one! I think I shall just write them as they come and eventually assemble them into something resembling an order. backstory note: James Shepard went MIA in 2166 on his first N7 assignment. I wrote a brief description of Emma's Skyllian Blitz experience on my tumblr. 

* * *

After all the fuss had died down, after the parades and ribbons and speeches, the white-tie dinners, the hand-shaking and the toasting, the brass decided to give her shore leave. "To make up for last time," one of the admirals had said with a wink, and everyone else had laughed, though Emma had found her amusement limited to the occasional tight smile. She'd been given a shuttle and the promise of a ship to any destination she picked, but the one place she really wanted to go wasn't there anymore and as far as she knew there was no shuttle to five years ago. So she dithered—the Hero of Elysium, _dithering_—and finally submitted her request.

"Another ship?" the shuttle pilot taking her to the jump point said. "Don't you want to go somewhere with a beach?"

"Already did," Emma said. "Didn't go so well."

He laughed. He knew who she was; _everyone_ knew who she was, but she didn't think the admirals' generosity extended to the point of flying her to an asari resort. She wouldn't have been able to afford it, anyway, and besides, this was the right thing to do.

The taste of duty lingered as she boarded the SSV _Hong Kong_ , which happened to be heading through the same bit of empty space where the SSV _Leonardo_ was currently loitering while her fighter crews practiced maneuvers. One permission to board later, and she was sitting on the bunk in the XO's quarters while Captain Shepard fussed with her personal coffee pot.

"I'm so glad you're here," her mother said to the wall, as Emma sat tapping her fingers against her empty mug, looking at what she could have had, had she only stayed Navy. It was a larger cabin than others she'd seen—more room on a carrier, she supposed—with more than a foot between the bunk and the desk, and a sink and even a full gear locker, the kind to make any marine cry with happiness. If marines cried. "The crew here's a lot smaller than you'd think, and we still have another two months before we're done with maneuvers." She finally turned around as the coffee maker started brewing. "The company—"

"Gets old?" Emma offered, and her mother offered a familiar half-smile.

"To say the least," she said. "It wouldn't be so bad if those hotshot pilots would talk to anyone but themselves. They're cute, but you're probably better off where you are."

Emma had taken enough relations classes to know a peace offering when she heard one. And it was nice to hear it, and she almost regretted coming. "I don't know," she said, rubbing the fresh scar on her cheek. "I hear fighters are damn hard to hit."

"There is that," her mother said, and for a minute the drip of the coffee was the only sound between them. Emma looked down at her mug—still empty—at the porthole over the desk.

"Nice view," she said.

"It's not much, but it's certainly better than the racks," her mother said. "They forgot to give our marines their own berth, so they trimmed a few fighters from the inventory and converted a bay into their quarters. It's very...open."

"And not well-insulated," Emma said. "Sounds about right."

"It has a bigger viewport than the observation deck. Right beneath them." The coffee maker beeped as the drip stopped; Emma handed over her mug, and in a moment it returned to her warm and steaming, the familiar scent of her father's favorite coffee bean brewed at her mother's favorite strength. It smelled like warmth and sterility, space stations and home; it tasted bitter and weak, though not as bad as the rationed stuff aboard the _Hyderabad_. She didn't mean to wince—and maybe she didn't, and her mother just said, "Oh, you like sugar in yours, don't you?" from sheer recollection.

"Please," she said, and her mother rummaged in a drawer and tossed her a small packet that she tore open, dumping the contents into her mug.

"So you'll be here three days?" her mother asked as she tried to fill the silence with coffee.

"That's when the _Hong Kong_ will be coming back through," she answered. "Don't think I'm allowed to stay much longer. Sole survivor policy, right?"

Her mother smiled tightly; as if either one needed reminding of any of the Alliance's policies. "And you saw your sister, while you were on Earth?"

"Yeah," Emma said. "They wouldn't let her into any of the official stuff—MI doesn't want her picture taken, the PAO doesn't want the press getting confused about which Shepard was which—but we hung out." Her mother blinked. "She thought it was funny," she added, which was true. _Of course, they pick the _ least _ photogenic Shepard_, Catie'd said.

_Hey_, she'd said, half-heartedly.

_Don't lie. You hate the camera. You'd rather do your job hiding behind that helmet_.

_Says the girl whose entire career requires working in a dark, windowless room_.

_So maybe we're not that different, after all_.

"Well that's good," her mother said. "Her emails have all been cheerful, but I wasn't sure she wasn't..."

"Jealous?" Emma said. "Hell no. She took one look at all the brass around me—" She stopped, looked at her coffee, and said, "_Everyone_ knows who I am, Mom."

"Well," her mother said, "you're a hero."

"No I'm not," she said, and it was such a _relief_ to say it—Catie hadn't even bothered mentioning it, calling her _poster child_ and _golden girl_, she hadn't had to say it but she'd wanted to tell _someone_. "I did my duty. No more than anyone else."

"You saved a lot of lives, Emma," her mother said.

"No more than anyone else." She drank her coffee. The sugar had settled at the bottom, turning it syrupy. Usually her favorite part, but she sucked it down without pause, and her mother looked down at her own cup, turning it back and forth in her hands.

When she had finished, she leaned forward to set her mug on the desk, and her mother said, "What's really wrong?" She sat back, holding onto the edge of the bunk with her hands, and her mother said, quietly, "Was it the killling?"

She shook her head, although it hadn't been—great, but her military psych classes had had many a unit on the different effects of killing aliens versus killing humans. Battle had been—pretty much like everyone had said it would be, instinct and training making up for the gaps in her thinking, and batarians, with their sharp teeth and extra eyes, had alerted more of a predatory fear in her than anything else. Besides, slamming hovercars full of pirates together with her mind wasn't exactly the same as shooting one point-blank...though she'd done that too. But she'd done the post-combat sessions and had her counselor's vidcall number if the nightmares got worse, and besides, it came with the job; dwelling on it wouldn't make it go away.

Her mother didn't look completely convinced, and she'd seen her fair share of war zones, if not actual on-the-ground fighting—but she was a sailor, and Emma was a marine, and she almost wished—"Well," her mother said, "if not that, then what?"

She looked out the porthole again, at the twinkling stars, as stationary as if she hadn't left Earth. "I wasn't the only person there," she said. "A squad was holding down that power station, and half my platoon helped with the push at the Illyrian space port, but it's their freak of a platoon commander who gets the Star of Terra." Her mother opened her mouth, but she kept going. "And they didn't say it to my face, and I don't care if they think I'm a freak, but I can't command someone who resents me."

"Are you sure that's how they feel?"

She closed her eyes and was back at the awards ceremony, looking at the stony faces in the VIP corner, their brand-new commendation medals pinned to their chests as the Commandant spoke of her courage, bravery, and skill—as if a butterbar running off on her own and not getting killed was anything more than sheer dumb luck. And her soldiers knew it, knew that you stayed with your _team_, dammit, and she didn't know how to tell them there hadn't been anyone else because she didn't really believe it herself. "Yeah," she said, "I'm sure."

Her mother sighed. "Can you request a transfer?" And then she laughed, and said, "Hell, they're probably falling over themselves to give you whatever you want, aren't they? Which endears you all the more to your men, I'm sure."

"Yeah," she said, at once relieved and suddenly nervous—she hadn't planned on bringing it up yet, or maybe ever, and certainly not face-to-face, but this was her mother and Shepards were always straight with each other, even when it wasn't pretty. "And—yeah, I think I have something lined up."

"That's good, so long as you think only serving three months at your first assignment isn't going to hurt your career," her mother said, plucking her coffee mug from her hands, taking it to the sink and washing it out. "Where are you headed?"

She looked at her mother's back, down at her empty hands, and said, "I've dropped my packet for Rio."

"Rio?" her mother said, shaking out the mugs before reaching for the towel hanging next to the sink. "I thought you wanted a space—" Emma saw the moment she figured it out, her fingers brushing the towel one moment and dropping to her side the next, tightening into a fist. "Rio," she repeated.

"It's already been approved," she said. "I report in two weeks."

Her mother bowed her head, then turned back to her, leaving the mugs in the sink. "Is this about your father?"

"It's about my career," she said. "Captain Anderson himself told me they wanted—"

"David Anderson should damn well know better," her mother snapped, gripping the sink behind her. "And so should you."

"It's an honor to be asked," Emma said. "And there's no guarantee that I'll make it all the way to N7—"

"They wouldn't ask you if they didn't have every intention of pushing you through."

"If they try, I'll quit," she snapped back. She hadn't expected her mother to be thrilled, but that she would _doubt—_"I can do it, and I can do it on my own."

"And then what?" her mother asked. "You'll spend the rest of your life scaring batarians and whatever else they have out in the Terminus Systems. What about your _life_, Emma?"

"This _is_ my life, Mom," she said. "I'm a goddamn Marine, and I'm going to be the best that I can be."

"You can be the best without throwing your life away," her mother said, her face tight with fear or anger or maybe both. "They're going to use you up, Emma Jane, and when they're done with you—when you disappear, or lose your limbs, or take that hit to the head and never come back right—"

"Those are all risks _now_, Mom," she said, as if she hadn't—as if they _all_ weren't aware of the risks, as if being a member of the Systems Alliance Navy didn't start with risk assessment and end with going forward anyway. "Hell, it could just as easily happen to you, but you wouldn't give up the stars, would you?"

Her mother's expression slackened, almost as though she'd been winded. "I might," she said, and broke her gaze, looking to the porthole. "Sometimes I think maybe I should have. But Emma—" she looked back at her, then away, as if she couldn't quite meet her gaze, and Emma's chest tightened.

"These are my stars, Mom," she said.

"Why?" When she didn't answer immediately, her mother pressed on. "What can you do there that you can't do now?"

She opened her mouth, closed it—she hadn't thought about that, exactly, hadn't thought much past the opportunity to get away, hide behind a designation and the business end of her rifle, be part of a _team_ again, not just the solitary shining hero. Escape the parades and get back to doing the damn job. "I don't know," she said. "But I want to find out."

"You'll find dark," her mother said, "and you'll find cold, and you'll spend your life burying things that won't stay dead. And what will you come home to?"

The question was so laughable she almost didn't know what to say. "Whatever port they assign me," she said. "Isn't that what we've always done?"

Her mother looked—not quite hurt, but weary, and sad, and she almost regretted it; but it was _true_, and so she didn't apologize. "Yes," she said, rubbing a hand over her face, looking back to the stars, "that's true enough."

Emma looked back at the deck, realized her fingers were still clenching the edge of the bunk and belatedly released them. The silence in the cabin pressed upon her; it had become an all-too-common occurrence, and yet she wasn't funny like Catie and no one could make Mom smile like Dad had and she _still_ wasn't sure, after all this time, if her mother had really approved of her living on Earth instead of Elysium. She shouldn't have come. It had been the right thing to do.

"The marines have a few empty racks," her mother said finally, crossing to drop into her desk chair and pull up what looked like inventories on her screen. "You must be tired."

"Hungry, actually," she said automatically.

"Then I'll show you to the mess deck," she said, tapping on the various interfaces, "and have Dawkins—he's the marine XO—get someone to give you the tour. If it's Corporal Ueda, feel free to tell him to shut up. He's been asking about you non-stop. And stay away from the fighter pilots. They're nothing but trouble," she sighed, "and you've got enough of that."

Emma looked up as her mother stood. "Come on, let's feed you," she said, with a rough attempt at a smile, the same smile she saw when she looked in the mirror or at Catie's face.

They were family, even if it wasn't quite home, and so she smiled back and stood. "Aye aye, captain," she said, and together they left the little cabin and its tiny porthole behind.


End file.
